Friday, March 9, 2012

Busiest human Mormon

No food! There is enough food here. I'm trying to make the most out of the one-kilo yogurt-in-bags. I found fountain pens (disposable) in the BYU bookstore. They're not expensive or anything. There were at least three varieties there. One of them may have been Pilot. The most important thing is definitely socks still as winter is supposedly coming around for April or May.

Do you know what this week is

--

At the moment in which I stood up and interrupted the sentence I was writing, some delivery guys appeared to deliver three of eighteen new mattresses that we ordered. Getting those mattresses is part of  the story I was about launch into - so here it is.

This week has been the busiest week of my life. I have never had so many adult things to get finished under adult pressure. I am still surprised at this moment to inform you that, if fact, everything we set out to do this week has come out perfectly as we wanted it.

You see, the number of missionaries worldwide, especially in Latin America, is growing - so much so that the Area Presidency of Chile has decided to up our mission's complement of missionaries and budget so that we have two hundred in total, a net of eighteen Elders and six sisters.

The clever reader will immediately begin to see what this means for those who work in mission administration. We have to find about eight new pensions, furnish them, and rent them before they arrive - the twenty-seventh of March, some twenty-four days away.

Yesterday we woke up and did a bank run, then went to a place close to Melipilla to see a pension we want, which we got, then we came back and went out to fix the gas for some nearby sister missionaries (luckily all my repairing misadventures with Dad and Jake paid off and I found the gas line outside, turned it on and restarted the pressure regulator, which was the problem). Unfortunately we forgot about a family home evening we had planned. After a bout of self-loathing for forgetting, we arrived late. Luckily, God understood and softened the hearts of the people we needed to visit (to the point that they didn't even notice that we were late.)

I think this week's theme has been that God's got my back.

I've made an observation in reading the Book of Mormon. The attributes that each person in the Book of Mormon ascribes to God seem to always be the ones of which the observer sees a lack in the current civilization and time. I've actually found it to be instructive to ask people what they think God is like and from that determine what they find to be missing from the world.

Lehi - Just, Wise - Two dumb sons who try to kill Nephi like five times
Alma - Good, quick to hear - Big rich civilizations that kick him out all the time
Mormon - Dependable, loving - Angry, selfish, idolatrous oath-swearing soldiers that he led daily

And so forth. Just something to think about.

Today so far has been fun. We went in taxi to a quasi-american mall place and ate at the only restaurant I've ever seen in the entire country that has free refills. I got a burger and a drink. I drank six cups of coke, which essentially meant that after my companions were done, I kept asking for refills for everyone and drink all of theirs also. If you're going to drink soda, you won't do any more damage to yourself drinking four than you will for twelve, so I figured I'd keep going until everyone else got bored. (I am in danger of going soda crazy in America. I will definitely need to make some... goals on that one.)

Then we went to look at ties and I saw the newest Mac operating system. After picking my jaw up off the floor and pushing out the kid on the bike out of it, I ran away to not get trunky. I'm back on Windows 7 now, purging my love for computers out when the internet goes down for no reason or I have to do battle with Word. Windows 7 is better, but it still looks like it's a good 2006 operating system. 

I'm off that. I'm off.

I need to go do stuff. I am going to be the busiest human Mormon being on the planet this month. Pray please.

Love,
Elder A Conrad Crist

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